Silly Badasses

Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York)

Reason:
William “The Butcher” Cutting, loosely based on a real person,  is a man with a ridiculously strict sense of honor. On the one hand, he’ll throw a hatchet into your back without thinking twice. On the other hand, he’ll donate the meat he butchers to needy families.

He’ll also kill your dad, but fondly remember him in addition to removing one of his own eyes for disgracing himself in said fight with your father. He’s also got the silliest looking mustache this side of Snidley Whiplash, and he frequently wears top hats.

He’s a weird, crazy, funny-looking racist bastard. And one hell of a silly badass, to boot.

Quote: “You see this knife? I'm gonna teach you to speak English with this fucking knife!”

Napoleon Wilson (Assault on Precinct 13)

Reason:
What makes Napoleon Wilson so silly – apart from his name – is, quite simply, how he looks. Before we meet him, we’re told several cryptically badass things about him: he killed a lot of people, he’s facing the death sentence, and so on and so forth. But the moment we actually meet Napoleon is so awkward and weird it’s almost laughable: the warden opens the door to Napoleon’s holding cell. We see a scrawny white guy, his head lowered. He slowly looks up as the camera does a very over-the-top, very 70’s crash zoom into Napoleon’s face as he tries to look as badass as he can. This is exactly what we see:

All due respect to the actor and everything, but you’ve gotta admit that, for a badass killer, Napoleon Wilson does look a little downs syndrome-y.

Even more astounding, then, is the fact that Napoleon manages to overcome his decidedly un-badass appearance and still prove himself to be a pretty cool motherfucker before the film’s end: he’s the quintessential Murderer With A Code of Honor, he kills more bad guys than any other character in the movie, and he spouts out some incredibly cheesy/badass lines with a totally straight face.

Quote: “To a man in my position, days are like women. They’re all so goddamn precious. And they always end up leaving you.”

Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Reason:
Despite the fact that every teenybopper on the planet wants to have jump his bones based solely on his looks, you’ve gotta admit that Jack Sparrow was pretty damn badass the first time you met him.

The original Pirates of the Caribbean was tough to figure out, in many ways: who was the main character, Will or Jack? Was Jack even a good guy? Is Jack supposed to be comic relief, or an action hero?

And as it turns out, Jack manages to walk that delicate tightrope between the funnyman and the badass: at one moment, he’ll sail a sinking ship into port and walk around drunkenly, and the next he’ll hold Keira Knightley at gunpoint and kick Orlando Bloom’s ass just for the fuck of it.

And even though the Pirates sequel managed to deprive Jack of everything that was originally mysterious and cool about him (“Why is the rum gone” is only funny once), his personality in the first film is still silly and badass enough to warrant his placement on this list.

Quote: “I think we've all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually. Ecumenically. Grammatically.”

Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid)

Reason:
In much the same way that Duke Nukem stole all of his personality traits from Ash from Evil Dead, Solid Snake is basically a retooled version of the immeasurably more badass Snake Plissken.

However, since the Metal Gear Solid games are designed by Hideo Kojima, a clinically diagnosed insane person, Snake has to develop some awkwardly out-of-place emotions in order to cater to specific scenes.

At one point, for example, Otacon asks Snake if he believes love can bloom on a battlefield. Instead of punching Otacon in the balls and telling him to cowboy up, Snake actually indulges him and answers his cheesy question with an equally cheesy response.

This weirdly silly personality shift is evident at certain points in MGS2, as well. If you ask him about the villain Vamp, Snake will not only reveal that Vamp is bisexual, but will articulately defend Vamp’s right to love whoever he wants.

Right before snapping a guard’s neck and hiding his body in a locker. Snake can’t seem to decide whether he’s a member of ACLU or Delta Force.

Quote: “I think at any time, any place, people can fall in love with each other. But if you love someone, you have to be able to protect them.”

Wolverine (X-Men)

Reason:

Spike Speigel (Cowboy Bebop)

Reason:

While Spike is pretty ridiculous in his own right, his placement in the list is really just demonstrative of how silly most all anime “badasses” are, when you really think about it. As is the case with Spike, an anime hero is either a pretty boy who (in a juvenile attempt by the writers to make him seem “cool”) never panics for any reason, or he’s a gruff, pseudo-American “hardass” who speaks in an artificially deep-sounding voice whilst killing dozens of guys at a time.

As much as we all love anime, you’ve gotta admit that some of the characters are downright fucking silly. And amongst these silly characters, Spike Spiegel – a 27 year old bounty hunter who knows Jeet Kun Do and always acts laid back despite the fact that anybody with a brain would be scared shitless of the situations Spike is put into on a daily basis – stands tall.

Quote: “I've bled all that kind of blood away.”

Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China)

Reason:
In case you can’t tell, Jack is wearing lipstick in the above picture.

When discussing Big Trouble in Little China, John Carpenter admitted that he wanted Jack Burton, the hero, to have all the characteristics of a comic-relief sidekick whilst the movie’s real sidekick, Wang, had all the qualities of a hero.

As a result, Jack swaggers through the movie, arrogantly convinced that he’s hot shit despite the fact that he gets his ass kicked in almost every fight he gets into. If it weren’t for Wang, his sidekick, he would have died about fifteen minutes into the movie.

And yet, it’s Kurt Russell. His effortless cockiness and his ridiculous one-liners still somehow coalesce into a character that feels badass and looks badass, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Not to mention the way he kills David Lo Pan at the end of the flick, which is badass no matter how you slice it.

Quote: “It’s all in the reflexes.”

Hellboy

Reason:

He was summoned by Rasputin and the Nazis to bring about the end of the world, but decided to fight for the good guys instead. He’s got an indestructible right arm, a really big gun, and filed-down horns growing out of his forehead. He’s Hellboy, and he’s the silliest damn comic book character of the last decade.

While Hellboy is pretty smart and reasonably strong, the only reason he ever survives his fights is because he’s nearly indestructible. He frequently gets the shit smacked out of him by demons and aliens and monsters, but always comes out on top because of his hellforged right hand and his unwillingness to die.

So he’s badass, yeah, but he’s also got a really silly-sounding name (Seriously, Hellboy? Couldn’t think of anything more childish-sounding, Mignola?) and frequently insists on shouting his punch-related onomatopoeias (“BAM,” “BOOM,”) during fights instead of letting his fists do the talking, as it were.

Quote: “BOOM!”

Ash (Evil Dead Trilogy)

Reason:
If you’ve seen the Evil Dead Trilogy, then you know why he’s on the list. If you haven’t, then what the fuck is wrong with you? Stop surfing the internet and go buy the three greatest films ever put on celluloid.

Ash starts out as a regular guy in the first Evil Dead flick: he’s got a girlfriend, he’s living a normal life, and he’s content. That is, until the evil spirits that dwell in the woods begin to possess his friends and turn them against him. Eventually he has to grow some balls and chop up the people he cares about with an axe.

By the second flick, he begins to go crazy as the evil house refuses to let him leave and brainwashes him into thinking that the house is talking to him. He goes apeshit and starts dancing and laughing before he cuts his possessed hand off and replaces it with a chainsaw.

And by the time Army of Darkness is over, Ash has spewed out more corny one-liners than every other person on this list combined, he’s defeated an entire army of skeletons, and he’s gotten the shit kicked out of him at nearly every turn because he was too goddamn stupid to remember three magic words. In many ways, Ash is the ultimate silly badass: you root for him when he’s at his strongest, and you laugh at him when he’s at his weakest.

Quote: “Groovy.”